


remember the things that make you feel

by blackmountainbones



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Heroin, IV Drug Use, M/M, Oral Sex, and prostitution, pimps, toxic codependency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 22:19:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6827527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmountainbones/pseuds/blackmountainbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: Dennis Reynolds is a heroin addicted prostitute and Mac is one of his johns. Written to fill a tumblr request by biohazardgirl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	remember the things that make you feel

**Author's Note:**

> THERE ARE SO MANY TRIGGER WARNINGS HERE. Intravenous drug use. Guns. Violence. Pimps and prostitution. Anal and oral sex. Genderqueer character. An absolutely toxic codependency in every sense of the words.  
> Heroin is a hell of a drug. It is NOT glamorous. Do not attempt to shoot up drugs according to the way they do it in this story. That is asking for disaster. If you must inject your drugs directly into your veins, please seek out a reputable source of information. Actually, if you are dealing with addiction or codependency issues, please seek help. There are many professionals and groups that can help you.
> 
> Some notes on the drug terms:  
> dope=heroin  
> rig=syringe  
> stamp=bag of heroin powder  
> bang=shoot drugs intravenously  
> speedball=an intravenous mixture of heroin and cocaine

Dennis wakes up sick. His head hurts, his skin crawls. He’s shivering and sweating at the same time and the sheets stick to his damp skin like a bandage on a wound. Well. At least it appears he’s made it back to his motel room this time.

He checks the drawer of the nightstand and discovers two small glassine envelopes. _At least I had the presence of mind to save something for the morning,_ he muses. He’d been so fucked up last night that he couldn’t quite be sure how he’d made it back to the fleabag motel from the abandoned house on East Seltzer Street, but it appears he’d made it without being robbed or raped, so he’ll call it a victory.

In the bathroom. he fixes himself a fat shot, carefully heating the grey powder until it dissolves in the blackened spoon, then drawing the liquid up into a syringe. Tourniquet in hand, Dennis chugs a glass of water, does a few quick jumping jacks to get his blood pumping, and ties off his arm at the wrist. When the needle pierces the skin, he releases a breath he doesn’t realize he’s been holding, then pushes the plunger down and lets the heroin flood his bloodstream, enveloping him in its soft and pink cloud.

In an instant, his body stops aching, the terrible cold sweat stops leaking out of his pores. Dennis drifts on the euphoria of the heroin coursing in his veins, splashes cold water on his face and looks at himself in the mirror for a long, long time.

The flickering florescent light in the bathroom is not kind: yesterday’s mascara has smudged and Dennis looks like he has two black eyes. The lipstick he’d been wearing is all over his mouth and chin, a lurid purple smear so he washes his face slowly, deliberately, carefully removing the remnants of last night’s makeup. His naked face looks pale and alien in the mirror.

Afterwards, he makes coffee in the small carafe in the bathroom, lighting a cigarette as he sips the bitter liquid, wearing nothing but the complimentary terrycloth robe the motel provides for all customers. It’s stained and scratchy but it’s still more comfortable than his work clothes. Last night’s outfit is scattered across the floor in piles: a pair of recklessly high silver heels, miniskirt, and lacy shirt are lying where he left them. He ignores them for now.

Dennis sits and smokes, watching the TV with the sound off. It’s an old ritual: he and his twin sister would eat their cereal and watch the news with the sound off as their parents argued every morning. They’d make up news stories and tell each other tall tales as the anchors moved their mouths soundlessly onscreen.

Absentmindedly, Dennis wonders what his sister is up to now. It’s been several months since he’d last seen Dee--she’d been the one to post bail for him the last time he’d been picked up for soliciting, had looked so sad as she’d picked him up from the police station and driven him to the motel. He’d still been wearing his work clothes, and Dee had done a double-take: she’d never seen him dressed up before, at least not since they’d been kids playing dress-up in their mother’s closet.

That was something they used to do all the time, until the day their dad had caught them wearing his wife’s clothes, their faces full of clumsily applied makeup. Frank had beaten the shit out of him, and after that Dennis had been careful to only dress up in the privacy of his own room. No wonder she’d been taken aback that day at the precinct: it had been years since she’d seen Dennis like this. Admittedly, his makeup skills had improved a _lot_ since then. So many things had changed--not just the sharpness of Dennis’s cat eyed liner, but that hadn’t stopped him from being angry at Dee’s silence as she’d driven him back to the seedy motel that afternoon.

He shakes his head, clearing the unpleasant memories. The dope is making him crave sugar, so he dumps five packets into the rapidly cooling coffee, stirring distractedly. His phone beeps but it’s just Pepper Jack, checking in on his prize ho, so Dennis drains his coffee, texts back, then applies his makeup and gets ready to begin another day.

When he leaves the room, he checks his reflection in the mirror. _Perfect_ , he thinks, giving a twirl and letting his skirt flutter against his legs. He makes a good woman: his legs are slim and well-muscled, and his blonde hair falls down to his shoulders in gentle curls; the only thing that could give him away is the hint of a beard along his jawline but the foundation does a good job of covering up that imperfection, it’s nearly imperceptible.

Dennis blows a kiss at his reflection and locks the door behind him.

 

 

He arrives at the abandoned house at 99 East Seltzer Street just after three in the afternoon. It’s unusually quiet: a handful of junkies are fixing in the abandoned living room, ignoring the three women sitting on a sagging couch and checking their makeup in their compact mirror.

“How’s Pepper Jack’s finest ho?” a deep, rich baritone asks.

Dennis chuckles. “Aww, Pepper Jack, you’re too kind.”

“Ahhh no, girl, you just too pretty.” Pepper Jack smiles, his teeth big and white in his broad brown face.

Dennis giggles girlishly, flipping his hair over his shoulder flirtatiously. Pepper Jack puts one of his big arms around Dennis’s shoulders and whispers in his ear: “Hey Denise, we got a new one today. He lookin a little lost. You wanna show him some of Pepper Jack’s world-famous hospitality?” Pepper Jack winks and points to the new potential client: he’s young, about Dennis’s age--much younger than his usual clientele, which was generally middle aged and young and worn out from the junk. The sleeves have been roughly cut from his shirt, and he notices a few tattoos sprinkled across the man's arms and another peeking from the torn collar of his t-shirt.

Dennis nods--he knows better than to say _no_ to Pepper Jack _._ Pepper Jack was fair, and as kind as you could expect a man like that to be, but he was still a criminal and a pimp, not the kind of person you want to piss off and certainly, the quickest way to do _that_ was to refuse him anything.

So Dennis sidles over to the young man, getting a closer look at the potential john. He’s kind of cute: brunette with big brown eyes and sensuous lips, two-day stubble darkening his jawline. _Not bad_ , he thinks, licking his lips in anticipation, careful not to smudge his lipstick as he does.

“Hey honey, you looking for company?” he says, grinning flirtatiously as he approaches him.

The man looks over his shoulders before realizing Dennis must be talking to him.  

“Don’t be shy, cutie,” Dennis reassures him. His big brown eyes bulge with surprise but when Dennis reaches for his shoulder, he allows the touch.

“Yeah,” he says, “I guess I am looking for... _Company_.” He looks Dennis up and down lasciviously, eyes lingering on his legs and lips.

Dennis smiles. “Look no further,” he giggles. One of Pepper Jack’s other women catches Dennis’s eye. _Oooh, he cute!_ she mouths, but Dennis ignores her. “You got a place we can go?”

The man shakes his head, and a lock of his hair falls onto his forehead. It makes him look impossibly young. “No matter,” Dennis says, putting a hand on his elbow. “I got a spot.” Usually, he doesn’t turn tricks out of his motel room, but money is money. “Gonna cost you though. Twenty for a handy, fifty for a suck job. A hundred for ass, mine--” here he grins suggestively--”Or yours.”

Surprisingly, the man doesn’t balk at the high prices or try to negotiate, he just nods and hands Dennis a small wad of bills. Dennis counts them--one hundred dollars. He palms the cash, sliding it into his purse. “You got a car, babe?”

The man shrugs. “A motorcycle.”

“A badass vehicle for a badass such as yourself,” Dennis titters girlishly, following him out the door.

 

 

Dennis has never been on a motorcycle before. It’s terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time--every time they round a corner he thinks they are going to drive right off the surface of the world. But the stoic brown-haired man guides them capably through the traffic as Dennis presses his body against his back, whispering directions into his ear as his hair whips wildly in Dennis’s eyes.

Once they arrive at the motel, Dennis gets down to business, tosses himself down on the bed and toes off his silver heels. He’s been in the trade long enough to know better than to waste his time with pleasantries. The man stands in the middle of the room, his unruly brown bangs flopping into his eyes, as he watches him. Although Dennis is displayed on the bed like an unholy offering, he does not move toward him.

Dennis lowers his eyelids, smiles, and says, “Hey, handsome, why don’t you get comfortable?”

With that, the man removes his shirt and sits down on the bed next to him, wringing his hands. Dennis can see a fine sheen of perspiration on the man’s brow, although it’s chilly in the room.

“You don’t have to be nervous, baby,” Dennis says, sidling closer. He grabs one of the man’s hands (it’s shaking), puts it on his knee, then strokes the trembling hand up and down his thigh in small circles. “Look, it’s easy.”

The man hesitantly trails his fingers up Dennis’s smooth thighs, pushing them beneath his skirt cautiously until he feels the silky fabric beneath. The back of his hand knocks into Dennis’s balls, and he gasps, then squeezes them gently through the silky panties.

“Mmmhmm, that feels nice,” Dennis says, wiggling against the tentative hand suggestively.

He’s starting to get hard in the slutty, silky panties, and thrusts his hips against the exploring hand. The man makes a strangled, choking sound, then turns from Dennis and withdraws the touch.

This is new. Dennis is young and blonde and generously endowed. His johns usually can’t wait to get down the dirty stuff, yet this young man seems unmoved by the what Dennis has on display. Normally, he’d be pissed. But there’s something about the defeated way the young man had curled into himself that makes Dennis feel... almost sad for him. Or at least he would have been sad for him, if the drugs hadn’t taken all his feelings away and replaced them with an craving for dope so big that it crowded everything else out a long time ago.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Dennis asks, reaching for the man’s hand, but he yanks away from the touch. “We were having such a good time.” He pouts, arches one slim foot in the way he knows will make his legs look like they go on forever.

The man makes a noise that might be laughter; it’s a strangled, choking sound.

Dennis pauses, watching, but the man doesn’t move, just sits on the bed, beside Dennis, his head in his hands, silent. Suddenly he understands: “You know, all of Pepper Jack’s women are--like me,” he explains after a moment. “He’s known for that kind of thing.”

“I... I know. That’s... kind of the whole point,” the man answers. As he speaks, his hands are balled up, his eyes closed tightly enough to bring out the worry lines in his forehead.

“Oh.” Dennis processes this a moment, and the man must have mistaken his silence for interest or care or whatever because he continues: “My buddy Charlie pointed the house out last time we came into Kensington to cop. Said that the women in that trap weren’t really... _women_.”

Dennis reaches for the crumpled pack of cigarettes on the nightstand, but there’s no lighter, only a pack of matches. They’re dampened from the rain and don’t catch flame; when he strikes them, they only smolder.

The young man notices and removes a brass Zippo from his pocket, lighting Dennis’s cigarette. “Well, baby, what’s wrong, then?” Dennis asks.

The man shrugs, shakes another cigarette out of the pack. He flicks his lighter, inhales sharply, and snorts out smoke. “I just... Can’t do it.”

For the first time, Dennis notices the rosary necklace resting against the young man’s chest, the large tattoo of Jesus on the cross rendered in excruciating detail on his left pec.

“Isn’t that fucked, though? Isn’t it?” The man takes a deep drag on his cigarette and runs a hand through his hair. “Been thinking about it for weeks, and now, now when it’s right in front of me, I still just... Can’t.” He crosses himself and rolls his eyes, both at the same time.

Dennis sits down next to him on the rumpled sheets of the bed. “Honey, it’s OK. Look, you paid for my time already. We can just talk if you want to. The next hour of my time is all yours.”

The man takes another drag of his cigarette, grimacing.

Dennis smooths the wrinkles in the bedspread with the palm of his hand. “What’s your name?” he asks, unsure if the man will even bother answering him.

The man sighs, exhaling smoke in a cloud. “Mac.”

Dennis raises an eyebrow. “Just ‘Mac’?”

“Just Mac,” the man repeats. He stares at Dennis, the cigarette in his hand burning down into nothing. “What’s yours?”

“Denise,” he answers, without thinking. When the man narrows his eyes at him, Dennis offers him the ashtray, watches him crush the butt, then corrects himself. “Dennis.”

Mac looks at him, brown eyes wide and searching.

“My name is Dennis when I’m--off the clock,” he explains. He’s not sure why he bothered to tell this stranger his real name; his years of experience on the streets have made him hesitant to share any identifying information with the clientele. There’s something about Mac’s shyness that makes him want to be honest. It’s confusing--usually Dennis has no problem becoming whatever his clients want from him. With Mac, thinks he could be himself, thinks maybe that’s what he wants but hasn’t yet figured out how to ask.

Mac nods. They sit in the dingy hotel room, quietly staring at each other. “Hey, honey. Let’s fix you up... It will make you feel better.” Dennis says, because he’s bad at not doing anything; if he’s not gonna get fucked he might as well get high. Obviously, Mac agrees--he removes a handful of stamps from his back pockets. Dennis pours one out onto a small mirror he keeps in the nightstand for this exact purpose, cutting the dope into grey lines with a credit card, then passing the mirror and a rolled-up bill to Mac.

He leans down and inhales a fat line, sniffles, then wipes his nose leaving a grey smear on the back of his hand, passing the mirror back to Dennis, who shakes his head as he palms one of the remaining baggies and reaches into his purse for his kit. “No thank you,” he says. “I bang my dope.”

“I’ve only ever snorted,” Mac admits hesitantly. “Is it really all that different?”

“There’s nothing else like it,” Dennis admits, removing his kit from the the tacky pink purse. “It’s like... a hundred orgasms all over your whole body.” He unzips the red vinyl pouch to remove a syringe, cooker, and a vial of sterile water, then lays out his supplies on the nightstand as the man looks on with interested eyes.

“Can you...” Mac trails off, watching Dennis lay out his supplies. “Can you maybe, do one for me?”

Dennis pauses. It’s in the Junkie Code that you never fix someone their first shot--once you pick up the needle, that’s the beginning of the end. But it’s not like Mac is some innocent kid: he had obviously found his way here, to this dingy motel, all on his own. He’d brought his own drugs to the encounter, after all.

 _The man is already snorting heroin with a drug-addicted hooker, Dennis. He’s already fucked himself, you’re not doing anything wrong_ , he tells himself, removing a second syringe from his kit, looking Mac in his dark eyes that smolder with intensity. He reaches for Mac’s lighter and begins the process of cooking up the grey powder and drawing up the resulting liquid into the syringes, filling one needle half as much as the other.

Dennis fixes Mac first, because it’s been a long time since he’d fixed someone and figures he should be as present as possible for this. He picks up the syringe with the smaller shot and grabs for Mac’s arm.

Mac gives him a withering look.

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s way stronger this way. I don’t want you OD’ing on me. It’s too many cops. Too many questions,” Dennis admonishes as he brandishes the tourniquet.

He ties the rubber strap around Mac’s arm, slapping the crook gently, feeling for a vein. They pop almost immediately, fat and juicy, _healthy_. Dennis rubs his thumb over the fat vein in the crook of Mac’s elbow. It’s been a long time since he’d been able to hit that vein himself, and his blood crackles with lust, with craving for that first fat shot. He’s almost jealous of Mac, who gets to feel this for the very first time.

“This is gonna hurt,” he warns, brandishing the syringe. “But then it’s going to feel better than anything else in the world.”

Mac bites his lip, intently watching Dennis poke the needle into the fat vein at his elbow.

“You have beautiful veins,” Dennis murmurs as the blood registers in the syringe. He removes the tourniquet from Mac’s bicep, waits a moment, then pushes the plunger down into the rig, slowly flooding Mac’s veins with the clear liquid, watching him intently.

The moment the plunger hits bottom, Mac’s lips part and his pupils constrict almost instantaneously. “Wow,” he murmurs, watching Dennis remove the syringe from his elbow intently. “You weren’t lying about... that.” He’s got a dreamy, distracted look in his eyes, which look brown and bottomless from this angle.

“Feels good, huh, baby boy?” Dennis asks as he withdraws the syringe gently. A drop of blood trickles out onto the smooth pale skin in the crook of Mac’s arm, and Dennis absentmindedly swipes at the blood with his thumb. It smears lurid red and wet on Mac’s forearm.

Dennis tosses the syringe into the trash, and promptly gets to work, fixing himself up. He’s tapping one of the veins in his hand, and holds still, careful not to fuck up and leave bruises in the thin skin. Mac watches him fix, his eyes still bleary with the drugs, but intent.

He misses the first two pokes, but the third time’s the charm. As the blood blooms in the syringe, Dennis loosens the tourniquet on his wrist with his mouth, and pushes the plunger down in a precisely practiced motion, sighing as the warm rush hits his bloodstream. A drop of blood dribbles out onto his wrist, and Dennis licks it up without thinking. It tastes like rust.

Mac reaches for him, and they lie together on the big bed, nearly spooning, quietly letting the dope wash over them. The initial rush settles, and the dope infuses everything with a soft golden glow. Dennis can almost believe that he’s not lying on dirty sheets in a cheap motel with a man whose name is the only thing about him that he knows (he knows it’s just the dope talking, and he knows the dope lies but he always listens anyway).

“Feel better, baby?” Dennis asks, and Mac nods and he feels it against his chest. It’s been a long time since Dennis has been quiet and still like this with someone else-- _the irony_ , he thinks, _a whore who’s starved for touch_ . But _this_ kind of touch is different from the hard and hurtful hands he’s used to, so he lets Mac hold him, doesn’t protest when Mac’s hands run up and down his torso, hesitantly, experimentally, not even when Mac drags his lips along Dennis’s collarbone in an open-mouthed kiss.

Dennis doesn’t kiss his johns. It’s one of the first tricks of the trade he’d learned, and he rarely ever breaks that rule, unless there’s money in it. But he lets Mac kiss his neck and shoulders and doesn’t try to negotiate. The kisses are strangely tender and chaste; this is something unfamiliar and uncomfortable, but not altogether unpleasant.

They spend minutes like this, Mac nibbling on Dennis’s neck and shoulders, stroking his hands up and down Dennis’s body, nestling his fingers into the spaces between ribs. He removes Dennis’s shirt and the lacy bralette underneath, stroking the bare chest until the small pink nipples peak into tiny nubs.

“Do you think...” Mac trails off, bites his lip, tries again. “Would you take a shower with me?”

It’s unorthodox. Sure, a few johns have wanted Dennis to shower before fucking him, which yeah, he _gets_ that (he can’t blame them for wanting to ensure he’s clean) but this is new--no one’s asked for this, and Dennis has been in the game long enough to have seen most everything.

Well. It’s not the weirdest thing Dennis has done for one of his johns (that would have to go to the man who had brought a full array of dental tools and asked Dennis to scrape his teeth for him in the nude), so he agrees: “C’mon. Let’s take a shower.”

Even though the shower had been Mac’s idea in the first place, Dennis can see the hesitation in his eyes. He stands up from the bed and reaches a hand out; Mac lets himself be guided to the dingy motel bathroom, removing his piece from the waistband of his jeans and placing it on the toilet tank (Dennis almost shudders at the sight of the gun, but refuses to let his fear show; in his experience, that was a recipe for robbery) before letting Dennis strip him under the flickering florescent lights as the water warms.

When the bathroom begins to fill with steam, Dennis pushes back the shower curtain, and pulls Mac into the stream of hot water behind him. But when he tries to soap Mac’s broad back, he shrugs off the touch, turns to face Dennis, says, “Hey. C’mere. Lemme see what you look like.... Without all... This.” He washes Dennis’s face tenderly beneath the scalding water, rubbing his skin so softly with the washcloth that the cheap terry doesn’t even scratch. Dennis lets Mac wash him with the same hesitant hands that had stroked his skin in the bedroom until he’s cleansed every part of Dennis’s body.

As Mac washes him, Dennis can see he’s beginning to get hard. His dick pokes the skin of Dennis’s ass and thighs as Mac sensuously soaps him clean, and it’s tantalizingly long and thick. _Maybe we’ll have some fun after all._ He turns the water off.

“You look better. Without all the ... stuff,” Mac murmurs, towelling Dennis’s hair dry. His curls are already beginning to frizz up--Dennis hardly ever lets his hair air-dry. His makeup has all come off, and it’s strange, he feels unusually exposed. Dozens of men have seen him naked, but he can’t remember the last time one of his tricks has seen him without makeup.

He cocks his head, lets Mac continue to gently dry him off before returning the favor. They walk back to the bed slowly and in step. As they lie down together, Dennis removes the lube and a condom from his drawer, and Mac raises an eyebrow.

“You’ve really never done this before,” he says. It’s not a question. Mac bites his lip, shakes his head.

“Don’t worry. I’ll--help you out.” Dennis grabs the bottle of lube, shaking a generous amount onto his fingers. He kneels on the bed, his ass in Mac’s face as he reaches down the crack of his ass, then pushes his fingertip against his sphincter. There’s a little resistance, but he breathes slowly, letting his body adjust before he drives deeper, then begins gently thrusting.

He chances a glance over his shoulder, and Mac is lying on the bed, transfixed. He watches Dennis drive the finger in and out of his asshole, gasping when he adds a second finger. Dennis waits a moment, then speaks, “You’re gonna want to--uh--stretch things a little bit,” he explains, spreading his fingers wide.

A moment later, he feels Mac’s fingers circling his wrist. “Let me,” Mac whines, and Dennis feels a slick finger nudging between his own.

After a few minutes of clumsy fingerfucking, Dennis unrolls the condom onto his dick with some effort (god, Mac’s dick is beautiful, long and fat, the head pouting with a drop of precum already) then gets on his hand and knees, ass in the air. Mac thrusts, misses, the head of his cock pressing against Dennis’s balls, so Dennis grips Mac’s cock by the base and guides him inside.

He’s done this hundreds of times. It shouldn't feel different--it should feel like it always does, like nothing at all. But it doesn't, and he doesn't know why.

Mac’s touch burns through the dope. Usually, Dennis just feels numb, lets his johns use his body because he’s not really _there_. But beneath Mac’s hands, he can’t be anywhere else. When a moan escapes from between his chapped lips, Dennis is surprised at the way the sound rips itself free from his body.

Mac notices. His thrusts becomes rougher, more insistent. He touches Dennis like it’s a dare: _do that again. Moan for me again._ The intention is so clear, Dennis is certain that Mac’s spoken them aloud though his mouth hasn’t moved from where he’s been sucking a bruise into the nape of his neck. And Mac pushes into his asshole until Dennis gives in, lets the moan in his stomach escape past his lips, and it’s _loud_ , it fills the whole room.

They bang slowly, excruciatingly. The drugs keep them on the edge of orgasm and won’t let them come. Mac alternates between gentle, shallow thrusts, and deep ones that make Dennis feel like he is being torn in half and those are the ones he likes best of all.

Suddenly Mac’s cock withdraws from his hole with a _pop_ of suction. Dennis opens his eyes (he’s had them scrunched shut, all he can do is _feel_ and he doesn’t want anything to come between him and this, _oh god_ , it’s too much, it’s not enough, all at once) and his mouth to ask _why_ but before he can remember how to make words, Mac flips him on to his back and lifts Dennis’s legs to his shoulders before gripping his dick and shoving it inside. It’s rough, too rough (Dennis realizes he will probably have to take the rest of the night off after this) but he whines. Somehow Mac understands the wordless cry means _more_ , and he gives it to him, lets the weight of his whole body press Dennis down into the sheets as he drives inside him.

Their chests are pressed together, their foreheads inches apart. Before Dennis knows what’s happening, Mac kisses him on the mouth. At first, Dennis almost doesn’t recognize the sensation (Jesus, it’s been so long since he’s had a fuck that wasn’t all _business_ ), doesn’t know what to make of the warm wetness and the slick tongue swiping against his lips. And even though this is another one of his rules, one of the things he does to lock his consciousness away during these encounters, he parts his lips and lets Mac in.

The kiss makes Dennis feel like a teenager again: hot and hard and full of want. He digs his fingers into Mac’s hair and _means_ it, sucks on his tongue so deeply he’s choking on it like a dick. His ears are ringing like he’s shot up a speedball though there had definitely not been any coke in his dope but he hears the bells ringing and his heart speeds up until he thinks he might die--then Mac drives into him with a deep and brutal thrust and Dennis can feel his cock twitch in his ass as Mac screams his orgasm into his mouth.

A few moments later, Dennis slides his ass off of Mac’s dick with a slick slurp. His heart is still pounding and he can still hear the ringing though there’s no churchbells in all of Kensington and his dick is still hard as fuck. He can feel the semen in the shaft of his dick, but the goddamned dope won’t let him come and he jerks at his dick in frenzied frustration while Mac watches him with half shut eyes.

When he comes, Dennis screams so loud he’s sure they can hear him on the next block. It’s been a long time since the last one (it’s true, he does so much dope he can barely feel his dick most of the time) but he’s pretty sure that his balls are wrung dry of every drop of cum inside them. He’s powerless to do anything but pant and collapse back into the sheets.

Dennis knows he shouldn’t let Mac linger: he should grab the towel from the armchair, clean himself off and usher Mac on his way, but he can’t make himself move. He’s powerless to do anything but lie here and linger in the lazy afterglow. He feels high, like the rush when he pushes the plunger down into the rig, but instead of just seconds, it threatens to last forever.

Mac lies next to him, sweaty and destroyed, his eyes glassy and deep in the darkness. He doesn’t try to touch Dennis but there’s something about the way that his hands clutch the sheets that suggests he wants to but doesn’t know if he should so Dennis grabs one by the wrist and places it on his chest. They breathe together like this in the darkness for what feels like hours before their skin stops sparking, before Mac cleans himself and dresses and leaves.

After Dennis locks the door behind him, he cooks up another shot and fixes but for some reason, the dope doesn’t seem so strong this time. There’s something haunted and hollow inside him that the dope can’t fill, and it’s strange, it always has before.

 

 

Dennis starts to see Mac regularly after that. Once a week, Mac comes by for his drugs and more often than not, one of Pepper Jack’s women too. Most weeks, he chooses Dennis.

He starts looking forward to Mac’s visits; they’re almost routine. Mac makes him shower and dress in ratty jeans and a t-shirt. They drink beer and shoot heroin and hold each other, telling stories from their pasts: Mac tells Dennis about Poppins, the family dog that wouldn’t die, Dennis tells him about how he and his twin sister played dress-up and watched cartoons with the sounds off in their youth. Sometimes they fuck, and sometimes they’re too high to come, but Dennis doesn’t mind it much at all. He cancels all his other dates on those nights, preferring to stay inside and let Mac ride him for hours.

One night, they smoke cigarettes in bed, after a particularly long and excruciating fuck. Dennis feels like he’s been turned inside out; there’s a dull ache at the base of his spine (which is to be expected, after all) and another in his chest (which is totally unprecedented).

“You know, I don’t normally do this,” Dennis hesitates. “But I could give you my number. You know, if you ever just.... wanted to see me or something. You wouldn't have to go through Pepper Jack.”

Mac snorts, reaching for the cigarette in between Dennis’s fingers. “Yeah, right.”

Dennis frowns.

“Look, it’s just... I’m not a rich man, Dennis,” Mac says, exhaling a mouthful of smoke.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dennis says, turning onto his side so he can watch Mac. “I don’t care about that.”

Mac’s inscrutable. Even with all the years he’s spent observing his johns, Dennis has never seen that expression before: his eyes are dark and deep and burning. He imagines that looking into Mac’s eyes must be what it’s like to look into a volcano the moment before the lava erupts.

When he finally speaks, it’s a question so soft Dennis care barely hear it. “You mean that?”

Dennis turns on his side to face Mac. “No, it’s true. I don’t care. As long as it’s you.”

Mac runs his fingertips over the sheets. “I don’t believe you.”

“You should.”

“Junkies lie.” It’s not untrue.

Dennis sees red. “You’re a junky too,” he spits.

Mac doesn’t say anything, just reaches for Dennis, mouth open wide. Dennis lets him stay the night, knows he shouldn’t, does it anyway. When Mac leaves in the morning, he kisses Dennis on the mouth and his tongue is tinged with heroin, bittersweet.

 

 

Dennis doesn’t expect Mac to call. Except the very next day, his phone buzzes. It’s Mac. He answers on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Dennis? Um, it’s Mac.” Dennis can hear him swallow on the other end of the line. “Uh, I was wondering if you were free tomorrow night?”

“I can be,” he says, dropping the magazine he'd been reading to the floor.

“Cool,” Mac says, and Dennis can hear the excitement in his voice despite the fact that he’s obviously trying to conceal it. “So I’ll pick you up around 8 then?”

Dennis takes the next day off.

 

 

Mac picks Dennis up from the motel on his motorcycle. He’s obviously surprised when Dennis heads downstairs: he isn’t wearing makeup (OK, foundation and concealer don’t count) and he’s dressed in men’s clothing, slightly slouchy jeans and a soft blue sweater. His hair is frizzy, air-dried; it feels strange to be outside like this. It feels familiar.

“You look... Good,” Mac says, and Dennis’s chest swells at the compliment.

Dennis runs his hands through his unruly hair, letting his fingers linger on his neck. “You think so?”

“Of course I do.” Mac looks at him with wonder, with hunger.

He hops on the back of the motorcycle and wraps his hands around Mac’s waist. When he guns the throttle, Dennis presses his face to Mac’s shoulders and lets the wind run its fingers through his hair. This, he figures, is as close to flying as anything he’ll ever feel.

Mac takes him to a bar where they drink too much beer and shoot pool. It’s nothing fancy, just one of the many dilapidated dive bars in South Philly with the generic Irish name of Paddy’s Pub. The bartenders seem more interested in fighting with each other than serving their patrons but the beer is cheap and plentiful and no one interrupts their game. Mac seems comfortable here and idly, Dennis wonders if he’s been here before, if this place is somewhere Mac goes in his normal life, if this is the kind of man he is when he’s not shooting dope and banging whores.

Suddenly he’s greedy for Mac in a way that has nothing to do with his dick. He wants to know who Mac is when he’s not with Dennis, is curious about who Mac is when he’s not in his bed. He notices Mac’s attention occasionally wander from him to the Phillies game showing on the TV behind the bar but he’s endeared instead of annoyed--he notes this down in the same part of his brain where he keeps everything he’s observed about Mac.

They don’t leave the bar until after midnight and Dennis is swaying from the drink. He rarely drinks--if given the choice, he’d prefer to nod. It’s been a few hours since his last shot, but he doesn’t feel the sickness creeping. He’s pleasantly drunk, maybe a little more drunk than he expected, he realizes, when he stands and stumbles on their way back to the bike.

Mac sees him stumble, and catches him. “Hey, babe, you all right?”

Dennis feels himself flush like a fever spiking. “Yeah, ‘m fine. Just a little more drunk... than I thought.”

Mac helps him onto the motorcycle then takes him to a diner to sober him up. They order beer and burgers that are so comically oversized at Dennis can barely fit the damned thing in his mouth and the juice and grease gets all over his chin.

“You’ve got ketchup--” Mac gestures to his cheekbone. Dennis dabs his face with a napkin, misses, and Mac smiles at him, bashful, the corners of his mouth just barely upturned and hidden beneath the fingers of the hand that’s propping up his chin. His eyes sparkle with amusement as he wipes the ketchup from Dennis’s face: he feels his cheeks burn, and it has nothing to do with the drink.

When Mac’s fingers brush over his kneecap beneath the table, Dennis feels like he might burst. Even if they get too high to come that night, they spend hours working their bodies over until they’re wrung out and sore, and Dennis thinks maybe he could live like this forever.

 

 

Dennis starts working less and less often, until he’s hardly working at all. Mac fills up his time: he learns some of the mundane things about the man, learns that he shares a studio apartment with his best friend Charlie, learns that he goes to church every Sunday and sometimes even in between and that he drinks his coffee light and sweet. It doesn’t matter that he’s not working, Mac’s job as an auto mechanic pays for the room and their dope too.

Dennis stops shaving his legs and chest regularly--he’d noticed the way Mac’s dick has throbbed when the stubble started to grow out, the way Mac had nipped and pulled the tiny hairs, and decided he liked it. He starts dresses casually, foregoes a full face of makeup for light foundation and mascara alone--or none at all. His silver heels are buried at the bottom of his small closet beneath piles of lacy trappings of femininity, abandoned but not forgotten completely: Mac likes the juxtaposition of the short skirts and silky panties and his hairy legs, calls him a slut and he likes it. Some nights Dennis will dress up and put on dramatic makeup and his fuck-me heels and when Mac arrives he’ll look at him with hunger in his eyes and push Dennis’s skirt to his waist and fuck him up against the wall until their legs start shaking.

It’s the closest thing Dennis has had to a relationship since he’d fallen so hard and so fast for heroin so long ago. The dope had taken over his body until there was no room in it for anyone else, even himself. As he taps the air bubbles out of the syringe, he idly wonders what else he might have had, if he hadn’t had this first.

 

 

They carry on like this until the day Mac shows up without warning. Dennis had been in the shower, and hadn’t heard the knocking on the door for several minutes. Mac’s agitated, his face red, his eyes wild, hair all undone, on the other side of the door.

“Fuck, dude,” Mac moans. “I lost my fucking job!”

Before Dennis can respond, Mac pushes past him and into the room, seething with rage. “That asshole Randy found my dope in my toolbox and told the supervisor, that fucking rat! I should shoot him in the fucking mouth.” His hands are fists, flailing at an unseen enemy.

Dennis tries to calm him, but Mac’s rage is untouchable. “I should shoot that bastard in the fucking gut!” he yells, reaching for his gun in the waistband of his pants. “Teach that goddamned cheeseburger walrus a fucking lesson he’ll never forget.”

Any other time, Dennis would have laughed at _cheeseburger walrus_ (Mac has a gift for these ridiculous nicknames, has come up with gems such as _jabroni_ and _pussyhands_ ) but he’s frozen at the sight of the gun, terrified at what Mac might do if he speaks to loudly or moves too fast. “Mac, babe, please--” Dennis begs, quietly, then again, louder. “Mac, please, stop!”

“ _God damn it!”_ Mac howls one last time, before collapsing onto the bed. All the rage has gone out of him and he’s crumpled up like a used tissue, eyes small and red and mean in his face.

“Shh, babe. It’ll be OK,” Dennis murmurs, gathering Mac’s boneless body in his arms. He lets Mac lie in his lap and cry himself out, rubbing the heaving shoulders with his cold hands as he repeats reassurances over and over until they lose all meaning.

Finally, Mac goes still, then pushes himself upright. “Dennis, do we have any dope?”

Dennis nods, and opens his drawer. Mac removes three bags, and fixes himself an extra large shot. Before he can remove the rig from his arm, he falls out--his eyes close and he slumps forward, soggy and crumpled like a used tissue, then catches himself. “Jesus,” he murmurs, “that’s some good shit.” He blinks his eyes, once, twice, slowly, and Dennis reaches for him, an anchor against the dope.

He kisses Mac’s shoulder, sucks him off until his jaw aches. But Mac’s so high he can barely get hard--his dick is full plump and pouty in his mouth but never comes to full erection.

“Dennis. Please. Stop.” Dennis ignores him until Mac sits up and pulls Dennis off his dick harshly, by his hair.

Dennis has saliva all over his chin. His lips are puffy and swollen and his tongue feels heavy in his mouth and wipes his lips before saying anything. “You don’t think I’m attractive anymore?” His voice is rough and crackles with something like disappointment.

Mac shakes his head. His eyes are brown and wounded. “Baby, you know that you’re still the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.” He tries to kiss Dennis, who turns away at the last moment so that the kiss lands on his jawbone with a wet _smack_.

“You want the dope more than you want me.” He’s whining, doesn’t notice until he hears himself speak, doesn’t care as much as he should.

“Dennis. Dennis. Don’t be that way.” Mac’s eyes are brown and wounded; they peer at him from the deep and darkened sockets as he pleads.

Mac reaches to embrace him, but Dennis turns away from his touch, gets up off the bed, and grabs his kit off the grimy kitchenette table. “You’d rather get fucked up than fuck me? Fine!” He throws the little leatherette bag right at Mac’s face; it misses, but not by much. “I don’t give a shit what you do.” It’s a lie, Dennis’s whole world has shrunken down to this: the sharp bite of the needle and the gentle nibble of Mac’s teeth.

But Mac doesn’t say anything, just cooks up a shot for each of them. Dennis lets Mac fix him--the veins in his hands are blown, and Mac has to hit him in the thigh. Dennis had always been proud about his legs--long and lean and unblemished, they’d always been his best feature--and he supposes he’d be upset about the tracks creeping down his thighs if he didn’t want the the dope more.

Once the heroin washes over him, it takes the anger with it. He cuddles up against Mac’s chest, just running his hands over the wiry dark hairs of his chest, until their breathing begins to slow.

They lie in bed like this, Mac cradling Dennis, the heroin lying between them. Even though his veins are full of dope, Dennis feels empty, like he’s lost something he can never get back.

 

 

They wake up sick in the morning, the empty glassine pouches and dirty needles in a pile on the nightstand, a reminder of the previous night’s excesses.

“Goddamn it, we’re out of dope,” Dennis curses, wiping the sweat from his brow.

They count their money: sixteen dollars between the two of them. Barely enough for one bag, definitely not enough for the two of them to get well, to stop this awful sweating and heaving in their guts, and so Mac and Dennis stare at the pile of crumpled bills and at each other.

Dennis clears his throat. “I could.. go back to work.”

Mac scrunches his forehead, brings his hands together like a prayer, rests them against his brow. “Dennis. I wish you wouldn’t.”

“What the fuck else are we supposed to do?” There’s an edge of hysteria in his voice. _Goddamn it._ “I don’t see you getting up off your ass to do something about it.”

Mac shrugs the leather jacket over his shoulders, grabs his gun and sticks it into the waistband of his pants, then slams the door behind him. The slam echoes like a gunshot, and Dennis shivers, smokes, and waits.

When Mac comes back, he throws a wad of bills onto the bed. they scatter everywhere, and it’s more money than Dennis has ever seen in his life.

“Jesus, Mac, where did you get all this?” Dennis asks, wonder in his words.

Something dark passes over Mac’s eyes. He rubs his hand against his chin and mouth, distracted. “Don’t worry about it, babe,” he whispers. “What matters is it’s ours now.”

And Dennis is so excited that they fuck sober, for the very first time, on that pile of money. If Dennis could compare it to anything, it’s a rush as strong as his very first hit: he can feel his orgasm wracking through his skeleton and his skin and it takes him minutes to stop screaming. Mac pushes his hair back from his face, cups his chin in his hands, and swallows the sound until there’s nothing left, only breath.

 

 

They continue on like this for some time, weeks maybe, fucking and getting high and when the dope runs out, Mac goes out with his gun and comes back with a wad of cash and Dennis knows better than to ask questions. There’s so much dope, Dennis loses track of days--they’re lost to the fuzzy heroin fog that descends over everything and blocks out anything else.

One morning, as Dennis grimly dissolves their last bags of dope in the blackened and bent spoon, he is hit by the realization that Mac’s got to go out again, do whatever he’s been doing, and whatever it is, it can’t be good. His hands, usually so steady and sure (he’s got the motions of this ritual down to a reflex) shake as he draws the dope up into the rigs, and before he knows what’s happening, a sob hits him in the chest and it’s as violent as a fist.

In an instant, Mac’s arms wrap around him, pull Dennis’s slim frame close. “Hey, hey baby, what’s wrong?”

Dennis buries his fists in Mac’s shirt. “I don’t want you to go.”

“Baby. I have to.”

He’s torn. He wants Mac to stay, wants to say, _let’s run away from this, just you and me, we’ll leave the Liberty Motel and we’ll leave Kensington and this whole shithole city if we have to but most of all, we’ll leave the dope and it will just be you and me forever_ **_,_ ** _just you and me forever._ But then the dope starts talking, says, _just once more, OK, just cop one last time, it will be OK,_ and Dennis has never known how to say _no_ to anything the dope tells him so he sits and shakes and breathes Mac in until he feels like his lungs might burst.

Mac grabs onto him tightly, like he doesn’t want to let go. “Dennis,” he murmurs, and Dennis feels his own name soft and hot against his cheek, “Dennis, baby. Whatever happens, remember that I love you.”

Dennis can’t love anyone. He’s a shell of a man: under his ribs, where most people keep their heart and lungs and vital organs, have all been hollowed out by his hunger for heroin. But when Mac says those words, something flickers inside him that he can’t blame on the dope--it’s warm like dope, but where the drugs are soft and warm _this_ is focused and sharp like the edge of a finely honed knife and it cuts him from his throat to his thighs.

“Just come back to me,” he breathes. It’s not until he says the words aloud that he realizes how much he means them.

Mac nods and presses a kiss onto his forehead, wipes a tear from Dennis’s eye with the callused pad of his thumb. “Where else could I go?” he murmurs.

But Mac doesn’t come back, not that night, not the next morning neither.

 

 

By the early afternoon, Dennis is aching and awful. Sixteen hours without dope, and he’s sicker than he’s ever been in his life.

He can barely lift his head from the pillow, but he knows he needs to get back to work. He’s been gone for weeks, but he knows Pepper Jack will understand--he’s been in the game a long time, he’s seen the girls come and go and come and go and keep coming back. He might rough Dennis up a bit, teach him a lesson that will leave a bruise in the shape of a pinky ring, but he’ll take him back.

It takes him a long time to get ready: he has to shave his legs and chest and it’s slow work. It’s been weeks since he’d bothered to do this (Mac had never asked him to stop shaving, but Dennis could tell he’d been excited by it, so he hadn’t bothered for weeks); he goes through two razors and a half a can of shaving cream. He nicks himself half a dozen times with his shaking hands, presses toilet paper into the cuts to staunch the flow of blood but it doesn’t work, his legs are streaked red anyway.

The tight jeans and lacy shirt feel alien against his skin, and the string of his thong rubs against his aching asshole, still tender from the relentless way Mac had fucked him two nights ago. He’s not used to this anymore, wants to crawl back into the threadbare jeans and ragged blue sweatshirt Mac always said matched his eyes perfectly. But his guts heave in his stomach and he knows he has to have his dope, and soon, so he ignores it, stepping into his scuffed silver shoes and out into the street.

The sunken front porch of 99 East Seltzer Street is wrapped in yellow POLICE LINE tape and there’s a squadron of police cruisers parked in the abandoned lot next door. A handful of people are watching the officers from across the street, and Dennis recognizes a few of Pepper Jack’s women among them. He walks over and the girls recognize him instantly.

“Denise! Oooh, girl, you been gone a minute!” It’s Cherlene--she’s tall and brown and her hair is braided into an intricate design just like always.

Dennis nods, but no one asks where he’s been. They know better than that.

He clears his throat. “What happened?” he asks, nodding to the cops on the trap house lawn.

“Some young punk got caught stealing from Pepper Jack,” Cherlene whispers conspiratorially.

“I think he might have been one of yours...? Young guy, good looking, always kinda mopey though?” someone asks.

Dennis feels like he’s been stabbed. He lights a cigarette, hoping none of the girls notice his shaking hands. “Yeah. I might have known him.”

The girls titter and ask questions, but Dennis ignores them as he smokes. The cops are still pacing around the abandoned house and he’s too sick to stand around for too long, so he heads down Kensington, picks up a small and ugly man, blows him in his car, then cops a few bags on his way back to the shitty motel. He picks up a copy of the evening news from the bodega where he buys his cigarettes and the terrible news is true, right there in black and white: drug violence on East Seltzer Street, three arrests, one death, one cop shot.

In his mugshot, Mac’s eyes are black and his lips are bloody--it’s far from perfect, but it’s the only picture he has, so it will have to do. So Dennis carefully rips the page from the newspaper, folds it and puts it into the nightstand drawer, carefully tucking it behind the glassine envelopes that contain his stash, that contain everything he needs in this world.

His eyes prickle. When he rubs them, he’s surprised to see his fingers are wet. _God damn him_ , Dennis thinks, staring at his hands.

But as soon as he realizes he’s crying, he can’t stop. He cries for a long time, cries until his throat hurts and his chest is sore from heaving with his sobs. Dennis hates crying--it’s like swimming in the ocean in the middle of January, cold and cruel and full of salt. At least a dip in the ocean leaves you feeling invigorated, refreshed. He feels none of those things, just achy and wrung out and wrong.

His face in the mirror is a mess. He washes his face slowly, deliberately, takes a good look at himself without his makeup, the way Mac liked him best. He hates the jagged cheekbones, the lines in his lips, the loose skin that crinkles around his eyes. Without makeup, Dennis looks sallow, older than his twenty-five years; he’s incapable of seeing anything beautiful in his naked face. He can’t see the things Mac could see there--all the soft and pretty words he’d breathed against Dennis’s skin had to have been lies, nothing more.

At the thought of Mac, something in his chest tears into pieces. He feels like he’s been punched--it's that same breathless feeling, that same echoing ache. This is worse, even, than withdrawal: Dennis can stand the shits and the sweats and the (heaviness) in his skeleton, he’s gone through them a thousand times, over and over and every day since the day he’d crunched his first Oxy between his teeth and swallowed it down, knowing he never wanted to let go of this feeling until he dies. All these years later, Dennis knows that the dope will be how he does and he knows that he doesn't care; yet he knows this pain is worse, even, than that.

But he’s got something to take the hurt away--he’s got heroin. Dennis wipes his eyes, grits his teeth, and guides the needle home.

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: I am not, nor have I ever been a user of hard drugs. This fic is, however, the product of several weeks of research. Around the time I began "Pleasures of the Damned", I received news that a long-time friend had died of a heroin overdose (RIP, GCB, you were one of the OG's). Following his death, I began to research opiates and opiate addiction as a way to cope. Shortly afterward, Bio asked for a heroin-prostitution fic and this is what happened. 
> 
> Although this is an AU, I did try to stay faithful to the characters. I hope you all were able to recognize Mac and Dennis despite the fact that they are definitely not in Paddy's anymore, dudes. After all, Kensington is in North Philadelphia.
> 
> Randy and "cheeseburger walrus" are a nod to Trailer Park Boys, my other favorite show.
> 
> A couple of documentaries that were particularly helpful in the writing of this fic:  
> Black Tar Heroin, 1994: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XfP58clo1I  
> Drugs, Inc: Philly Dope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkU3nT7x3Y4  
> Heroin, Cape Cod USA is also worth checking out. My link was removed from YouTube since I researched this fic but it is very well done if you can find it.


End file.
